Co-hosting a portion of today’s Battlefield 4 Naval Strike live stream with Alex “GoldenBoy” Mendez, DICE associate producer David Sirland talked about some of the secrets that Battlefield still holds, as well as a few of the new balance tweaks arriving with the Naval Strike expansion on March 25 for Premium members.

Bringing vehicular warfare to the forefront with Naval Strike, DICE hopes to tweak a few gameplay elements in order to create a better balance between them. “We’ve been looking at helicopters, and of course helicopters have been a little bit on the weaker side,” said Sirland. “So in this release we are buffing them a little bit, making it easier for helicopter pilots to stay alive, basically.”

“There’s also other fixes, of course,” he added. “Like it’s really hard to kill something with two hits of the javelin rocket now. I’d say it’s impossible which is great.”

At one point during the stream, the topic shifted to the massive easter egg hunt that took place earlier this year, an event that brought much of the Battlefield 4 community together working towards one specific goal.

“It’s awesome. We couldn’t really fathom how big it would be,” Sirland explained. “I’m really happy it went that big.” But there’s more, he says. “The only thing I can say, I guess, is there’s more to find.”

DICE also hopes to expand on a few of the Premium-exclusive events that went over well with the community.

“We have our awesome Premium Calandar that contains a lot of items that we release. We’re also looking at other things that we can do for community members in the future – kind of looking at the community, again, seeing what works and seeing what doesn’t work as well and trying to do more of that, or things like that,” said Sirland.

He specifically mentioned the Phantom program and how quick the community was to figure that puzzle out.

“We get really good feedback and really happy feedback on a lot of things like, for instance, the Phantom program we talked about. It’s really nice when they – it becomes this community thing where you have this hive mind trying to break your puzzles really quickly.”

“So, we kind of took that and ran with it,” he added. “A game within the game, if you will.”

seems fun, still got that magic to make trailers… but BF had broken my heart….not the same since then.

pot51e

Does one of the Easter eggs improve hit registration?

…then stop thinking “Its fun, the community will love them” and fix the game.

I AM the community (official Dice apologist since 2009), and I’d prefer hit registration to work before I search for another fucking teddy bear.

thanks.

AA mines….Op locker…Shields. The humanity…

dieger

I can confirm that one of the easter eggs improves the crash rate of the campaign

Herbert

Cry me a river. Multiple teams work at DICE. The one working on “hitreg” and “fix the netcodez durrr” is different from the team adding content/mapmaking. One doesn’t have to wait for the other, it’s this interesting new process called parallel.

dieger

Ah shaddup. its been a month of this so called working and its still not fixed and now they are releasing DLC before its fixed when they claimed they wouldn’t work on DLC till the game was fixed.

Herbert

The DLC was already in the pipeline and probably complete when the game actually launched. No reason to hold it up while they work on netsync and hitreg.

Then they shouldn’t have said “work on future DLC content will stop till the game is fixed” its cool the game works for you now what about the other 99.999.9% of the other players?

Herbert

And they didn’t “work on future DLC” — since the DLC’s up to this point were already done.

Oblivion_Lost667

So, two DLCs (Second Assault and Naval Strike) were already done by time they said they weren’t going to work on future DLC? Then that begs the question, why wasn’t the content that was practically done by release, included on release? Either DICE has been working on DLC, or they’re milking us really hard, neither is good.

NuttyTheSquirrel

Second Assault was made by DICE LA. DICE just made China Rising and Naval Strike. And it’s pretty much impossible for the Naval Strike DLC to be done before the game was released, since we asked DICE for the Titan Mode after the game came out.

Oblivion_Lost667

Proving my point. Although, to be fair, people have been asking for Titan Mode probably as long as they’ve been asking for BF2143.

NuttyTheSquirrel

The game works fine now. It’s fixed. There are some bugs here and there like when you get launched and die, the kill-cam bug (OMG, JUST GAME BREAKING) and, sincerely, I can’t think of anything else…

P.S. I know you’re going to answer me with other “problems” and “broken” stuff, and I’m gonna tell you why you’re wrong.

dieger

RUBBER GODDAMN BANDING

NuttyTheSquirrel

Never had that anymore. Long gone…

dieger

great so you speak for everyone huh?

NuttyTheSquirrel

Everyone? Most of the players don’t have rubberbanding issues, and that isn’t really the game’s problem, is more a server problem. BF4’s servers suck.

LOL! You know that, when BF4 launched, people were complaining left and right, BUT, all those people that complained together… They’re just about 20% of BF4’s players TOPS. And, if people really had that problem, you would see people complaining about it. I just see people complaining about the Net-Code now. And I heard that, if you’re experiencing RBanding issues, you change servers, boom, not more RBanding issues… Which tells us straight away that it’s a server issue.

swipe_06

Im not familiar what platform you are playing on, but can you upload some footage of you playing? Not to pick a fight, but some people claiming no issues with this game, I even heard that the test servers are “even more fine”, but don’t upload anything that we could check out.

Ben August

Actually I think you’re the one having the tantrum.

NuttyTheSquirrel

So, what you’re telling me is for 3D and Level designers to literally die of starvation because you just want the coders to be working on the game? Yeeeeeeeee….. You “shaddup”.

Paul Thomas

Well I can tell you there’s something wrong. I can’t play more then two games of Obliteration or Conquest before my ps3 just stops for no reason. You may not be having any problems but I guarantee others do.

pot51e

Hi. Sorry, but what’s your point?

I have stood up for BF and DICE for years – in face of all kinds of criticism, and even cited MANY times that the people who do DLC are not the same people who “fix” stuff.

But after 1000 hours on BF3 and 300 hours on BF4, it’s a fucking chore sometimes playing this game. In BF3 we saw the rise of the “CoD-esque” approach, but by and large MOST of the faults were fixed. But Kharg was still the king of bad luck and rubber-banding in October 2013, 2 full years after release.

But that is not my gripe. My gripe is rolling out another DLC in a blaze of glory and pasting over the issues that the game has. He’s telling us how much fun we will be having next week, but I KNOW that at least 3 things will get broken (I’m going to guess; sound issue, a reload animation, and a spawn problem).

Then, they tell us to go and hunt easter eggs, “the community love it”. We loved it because it was a temporary relief from a disspointing FPS experience. While we’re all searching for Megalodon on 1/64 servers, we werent getting pissed off about being insta-killed from a ninja on the other side of the map with a magnum (when you are in a building).

I’m not a “fix the netcodez durrr” guy, as any of my other posts will tell – but patience is tested, strained and then snaps.

I will continue to play it, as I love it – and I will continue to mourn it, because they ballsed it up.

I’m just sad about it, that’s all.

I’m sad bro, not mad bro.

NuttyTheSquirrel

Nice thinking idiot. Because 3D artits and level designers actually don’t design the maps, they code the game, right? They’ve studied 4-6 years of 3D designing, Level designing, balance, and so on but according to you, they are working on the code, instead of working on what they studied so hard for 6 years or more. USE YOUR FUCKING HEAD! If you’re an auto mechanic and you’ve studied for that, you’re not going to be doing jets, or space shuttles idiot!

pot51e

What the living fuck are you wittering on about?
Show some semblance of either civility or comprehension.

I have no idea what your comment has to do with my post, or any of my posts. Ever. Try reading the words, then pause a moment, maybe two, and figure out in your mind what they might mean.

It even says it in words of few syllables:-

“I have stood up for BF and DICE for years – in face of all kinds of criticism, and even cited MANY times that the people who do DLC are not the same people who “fix” stuff.”

If you think your parents will let you back on to the computer and feel like you want to discuss the subject in a more mature manner, I’m happy to participate.

Try not calling people idiots too, it will help in later life.

NuttyTheSquirrel

“Does one of the Easter eggs improve hit registration?

…then stop thinking “Its fun, the community will love them” and fix the game.

I AM the community (official Dice apologist since 2009), and I’d prefer hit registration to work before I search for another fucking teddy bear.

thanks.

AA mines….Op locker…Shields. The humanity…”

*sigh* idiot…

That’s your comment, the one that I replied.
If you wrote what you quoted on another comment, I don’t give shit, because I replied to the “Does one of the Easter Eggs…” comment. Has I said, Designers, artists, etc don’t code, they most likely never learn how to use C++ nor the in-engine coding…

pot51e

And where do you attribute I say anything relating to:

“…Has I said, Designers, artists, etc don’t code, they most likely never learn how to use C++ nor the in-engine coding…”

Where do I mention anything about 3D level artists being coders? Where do I come anywhere near inferring that?

And why do you insist on calling me idiot?

NuttyTheSquirrel

“Does one of the Easter eggs improve hit registration?”

Easter Eggs are made by 3D Artists, Level Designers, etc…

Hit-reg is “made” by coders, programmers, etc… Easter Eggs have NOTHING, not a single thing to do with hit-reg. It’s like comparing apples to potatos.

pot51e

Wow. I have not seen anyone take something so far out of context for a long while to support an insult. Well done.

You have inferred something that I never implied. Not even close. But, let me rephrase it just for you:-

“Dice, Stop telling me about the joy of Easter Eggs, as at this point I feel that it is scandalous that you are happy to discuss your DLC on youtube and in the press (and praise to those who do a great job designing maps and levels (apart from op Locker)) – yet are unwilling to provide feedback or interviews on the progress you are making with regard accurate hit registration (where a player A’s shots do not register at the point in time where player B is) or on the effect that lag plays in that (where player B dies behind cover), and indeed kill trading (which is more than likely to do with the frequency that data is processed on your servers, i.e. tickrate).

I would be as excited as you for these Easter Eggs if you had built some mechanic into the game which, on discovery, fixed all of the above. I appreciate this would have had to be a collaborative effort between many people at Dice and obviously nothing a 3D artist can do.

I do feel that until you address the issues Ilsted, BF4 is a shadow of what it could be and on a personal level frustrates me immensely, and it as a frustration that many, many players share. BF4 is my favourite game, but it has serious flaws. We are also 5 months in and whilst lots have been fixed, these fundamentals have not. Also, evry patch seems to break something else (though ’twas ever thus with Bf3 as well)

BTW, I also find your choice of armaments not to my taste – and I generally think there is far too much weaponry and there are too many “samey” attachments in BF4.” Adding shields can only be seen as a gimmick, I encourage you to be more consistent with your stated ‘listening to the community’ ethos and see how much support you have for ballistic shields. Thanks”

Does that clear it up for you? For me it lacks punch and the impact that brevity can have in a comment. I also think that anyone with half a brain knew what I meant in my 4 or 5 line comment, but now here is the TL;DR version to clarify any misunderstanding.

roland0811

They never even finished/fixed Battlefield 3. That game is still a mess. What’s happening with BF4 is absolutely no surprise to me.

thatoneguy

“it becomes this community thing where you have this hive mind trying to break your puzzles really quickly.”

So wait for one person to crack the code, solve the puzzle, post it online, and everyone just do what he says..

Herbert

all the console kids creating forum threads begging for info on ‘how to do it’ are particularly mind numbing. It was WEEKS of “ermagerd watz the passwurd for phantom prospektz” threads.

thatoneguy

Actually I am a console player and I got the step-by-step guide for Phantom Prospect from MP1st. I rarely step foot onto the forums anymore, just full of whining and begging for nerfs/ complaining.

PC Master Race

Consoles suck and do not sell well. Buy a computer like this and you will see real gaming.

I wish I could get back into BF4.. its an awesome game, any bugs or issues aside. I really like it, but after picking up Dayz and Arma 3 again after a long time away I just cant play arcade style FPS games. Im not being elitist here, I promise. Im actually lamenting a bit, as a game I love just has lost its charm for me. Its like my heart is just not in it, but I want it to be.. anyhow, thanks for reading. This fact makes me sad.

I should just force myself to play it for 2-3 days straight.. maybe that will work

Herbert

Upvote for Arma3. I’m actually amazed at how much I’m enjoying the game. Watching other peoples gameplay never really sucked me in and the game looked boring, but when it went on Steam sale for $35 I figured what the hell, it really doesn’t suck you in until you play it. It’s certainly far more “BF2″ than BF3 and BF4 were ever going to be. And all the mods and community created missions were icing on the cake.

Thoroughly a fan of Arma now.

Oblivion_Lost667

I have a friend like that, which makes me sad, because COD and BF are both vastly different experiences from ArmA, and I like variety, so I play all of them, depending on the mood I’m in. COD is easy pick up and instantly get some action, BF feels like the middle ground, but ArmA takes a lot more effort to get a game going and to play, and sometimes I just don’t want that. On top of the fact that ArmA isn’t very fun on your own without friends to play with. (I love ArmA, BF, and even COD, I just don’t like the terrible state BF is in, and I hate the way Activision milks COD, regurgitating the same thing year after year and charging $60 for it plus DLC.)

I’ve always loved ARMA/OPF, and am loving the hell out of DayZ SA/mod.

But, I dunno, I never thought that ARMA/DayZ fully outclassed “arcade” style games. They’re just different experiences to me. I see where you’re coming from, but I just never really lost interest in any of them.

Well, perhaps CoD, although I still enjoy playing it. I haven’t bought a new one since MW3. Nothing about it as a concept that bothers me, just haven’t really thought that Activision/Treyarch has been making decent products lately. In fact, if CoD4 was still online, I’d be playing it to this day. I love that game.

NuttyTheSquirrel

CoD 4 is still online. It most likely has more players than Ghosts… (on PC)

Katana67

Never played it on PC, last I heard, they’d shut down the servers for console.

NuttyTheSquirrel

Arcade style FPS? Battlefield was never arcade. CS is “arcade”

P.S. – CoD isn’t arcade, they just say it’s “arcadey” because they don’t want to change the “formula” (A.K.A. laziness (from the IW’s point of view) ), which is old as fuck, and it’s gonna die soon. CoD became “arcade” when the IW team broke, the talented guys left IW, MW3 was the worst CoD and they knew that MW3 wasn’t great, so they said that didn’t change it that much because “It’s an arcade shooter.”
The original team NEVER said that CoD was an arcade shooter, au contraire, they’ve always said that they wanted CoD to be inovative and change the FPS genre and you CANNOT change the FPS genre with an “arcade shooter”.

Guest

Call of duty is an arcade shooter, And while Battlefield strives to be “authentic” it’s more arcade over the past 3 years. And yes you can innovate with an arcade shooter, Look at Cod4.

roland0811

CoD, Battlefield and MoH are all run ‘n gun arcade-y shooters. Always have been, always will be. There’s no two ways about it.

Brandon Griffin

I swear I was *this* close to finding the megalodon but my game crashed

swipe_06

Balancing changes don’t really matter before they fix the you know what. I was playing on a test server, and the jet physics felt totally different. Not sure if it was less rubberbanding or something else, but it was different.
Fixing exploits are welcome, but proper weapon tweaks can wait, cause hell knows how weapons would handle in a less laggy enviroment.

Oblivion_Lost667

True, but the air vehicle balance probably wouldn’t be near as effected by that, considering their biggest issues are simply all the AA weapons/vehicles are too strong, and are all practically lock-on.

Katana67

If it’s anything like BF3’s flight, I welcome it.

I could actually hit infantry targets with the jet cannon in BF3. Whereas now… coupled with the low damage, janky lag birdstrikes, and three-reticle madness, I can’t do any damage to infantrymen on the ground.

BF3’s jets flew so much more stable I feel. I could be talking out of my ass, but I just felt like they flew better.

PC Master Race

Jets in BF3 was over powered and for scrubs to hide in the sky. Nothing impressive about a Jet vs a tank. Tank rarely wins.

Good news. While I struggle to turn tight or orient myself on normal servers, on the test server the handling felt way more BF3 like. Search for “test”, they might be still up.

Oblivion_Lost667

Sadly, I wish they’d bring in some more jet vs. infantry mechanics, like carpet bombing and such. It’s something I wanted since BF3, the jets essentially, even in BF3, were uneffective against infantry, and only fairly skill pilots to pose any threat to infantry, while infantry could shoot rockets at jets all day long. It’s one of the few instances in BF where one thing essentially can’t properly engage something else. Even with the MAA in BF4, you can at least do considerable damage to it if the driver’s bad, and that’s severely unbalanced.

I mean hell, think of napalm/incendiary strikes in some maps, it’d be a nice area denial attack and might even net some kills.

Katana67

We’ve been looking at helicopters, and of course helicopters have been a
little bit on the weaker side,” said Sirland. “So in this release we
are buffing them a little bit, making it easier for helicopter pilots to
stay alive, basically.”

I’ll believe it when I see it champ.

Oblivion_Lost667

“A little bit on the weaker side” was quite the understatement, but I suppose PR dictates that never should a dev admit that their idea of balance was horribly wrong.

“We’ve been looking at helicopters, and of course helicopters have been a little bit on the weaker side,”

Translation: Levelcap and matimio released “Attack Heli sucks” videos and got hundreds of thousands of views, DICE makes balance corrections within 48 hours that we’ve been screaming about for 6 months.

M MW Diab

They are releasing DLC’s early so that they build hype towards us “The Community” so that we all get excited and forget about the issues with the game.

Some sort of cover up, I’d be happy if they put time into fixing issues and release a patch a long the side of this DLC.

Either way, happy gaming fellas!

wifey

Broj please where are you?

PHNX

About that calandar..
What is the point of having that if you rarely can keep the dates anyway?